


Meant to Go 'Round In Pairs

by Shaitanah



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-05
Updated: 2012-03-05
Packaged: 2017-11-01 05:59:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/352815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shaitanah/pseuds/Shaitanah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She makes him want to rise above what he is, but it’s not that easy. [early Season 1]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meant to Go 'Round In Pairs

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer belongs to Joss Whedon and Co. Title from “Summer Breeze” by Emiliana Torrini.  
> A/N: I actually dislike this pairing but I do love them as separate characters. I’ve been rewatching BtVS and this sort of came along.

She has that thing she does with her hair. Not even a thing at all, not really. She just sort of… flips it over her shoulder in a way that makes him imagine what sunlight would be like when playing over it. He hasn’t actually seen her in the sun but he can imagine it as a pretty sight. She always makes a pretty sight.

 

He treasures his gift of anonymity because it allows her to look upon him with curiosity, mild irritation maybe when he’s being all cryptic and poetic – except of course the game he plays is anything but this. He’s cryptic because he doesn’t know how to talk to her without swallowing his tongue for every lie it’s told, for every lie it will tell. He’s verging on maudlin because he is the creature of the night waltzing around its own doom – and Angelus would have loved the inane dramatics of this.

 

Back when he was Angelus, this was his favourite part. Stalking his prey, finding out which buttons to push. The long game. She would have been his masterpiece. He would have been glib, silver-tongued. He would have had all the right words at his command.

 

Now it’s like this: she does that hair thing, and his words fall apart like an unstable card house. They are harder to find than a black cat in a dark room, though admittedly the cat isn’t very hard to find for a vampire who has all sorts of – how would she put it? – spider senses tingling. Which only proves that she possesses that special power to turn his brain into mush – and it has nothing to do with her Slayer abilities.

 

He just wishes that he could buy her an ice cream or something. But of course it doesn’t work that way. Tragic romance – maybe. An ordinary date? Hardly. She has human boys for that. Every time he sees her with a human boy (which is, thankfully, not as often as one might fear), his hunger rises just a little bit more. Angelus would have gifted them all to her, a neat arrangement of body parts soaked in blood right there on her bed. As far as courting goes, that is all he has to offer: gallons of blood as Angelus and giving it all up as Angel. There is no middle ground.

 

He just knows that she wouldn’t like him if she knew him better. He is pretty sure she’s not too fond of him now, what with the harbinger of doom being his most prominent line. But there goes the hair and the smiles and she’s pretty handy with a stake too – and he feels like he is the one who is sixteen and she is two hundred and eternal and she shines like the brightest star. And this soul that’s a bit worse for wear after everything it’s been through can _love_.

 

If it’s maudlin, fine, he can be maudlin. If it’s sick, he can be that too. Just as long as he keeps to the shadows and watches her do the hair thing and the smile thing and the life thing. She does that so well.

 

_March 5, 2012_


End file.
